


Joint

by Asterisk



Category: Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Community: twd_kinkmeme, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Rape Aftermath
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-17
Updated: 2014-06-17
Packaged: 2018-02-05 01:26:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,202
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1800358
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Asterisk/pseuds/Asterisk
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Some things can't be shared with anyone, except the person who was there.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Joint

It took Glenn a moment to sit up. He clutched his ribcage tightly and took a long moment before he could remember how to breathe again – just the process of sitting up was enough to reawaken all the pain that had just started to dull. He couldn’t say why his ribs hurt, or why his head was pounding; whatever injuries he took from being wrestled and kicked down to the ground paled in comparison to everything else.

His back still ached, along with everything else, but with his eyes closed, none of it felt real.

It hurt, of course, but he couldn’t make sense of it. Kicks to the ribs left bruises, and having your head slammed against the ground left a ringing headache pulsating from the point of contact. He couldn’t imagine what this looked like, or what it was even meant to look like. Every time he moved, everything nerve sparked painfully through his back, all the way down to the throb between his legs and a boiling, torn pain somewhere up inside of him. It was more than skin deep and was instead welling up inside of him and permeating outwards.

He swore it reached up to his chest and tightened.

When he finally opened his eyes again, the first thing he saw was a dead body laying at his side with an arrow through the head.

A few meters away, Daryl was sitting with his back to Glenn. One hand held tightly to his crossbow, and in the other, Daryl was resting his forehead.

“Daryl?” Glenn asked. His voice was shaky as he spoke, momentarily uncertain. He hadn’t realized how raw his throat was or how badly it burned; he couldn’t remember himself screaming at all.

Daryl didn’t say anything.

He picked up the gun he’d managed to wrestle away from the man who raped him. It was the same gun that had been pointed at him when he’d been ordered to stand still, and had then been shoved under his jaw while he’d been forced to his knees and then onto his back, and then it had been enough of a motivator to stay still.

It had been under the man’s hand while he’d leaned over Glenn, and Glenn couldn’t keep his eyes off it. The way the man leaned over him, he had to use his arms for support, so there wasn’t a chance in hell that Glenn could just take it off of him – not until he climaxed and relaxed his grip, which was the moment Glenn grabbed for it and got it away from him.

One shot had been all he’d needed to distract everyone, never mind how shit the aim was. Daryl’s aim was better, and he’d taken that chance to take care of everyone else.

Very carefully, Glenn stood. Moving was an effort, as he’d already realized, with even the slightest movement causing more pain. By the time he was on his feet, everything was starting to overlap and blur together until things stopped hurting individually and he just felt tried.

He kept his eyes on Daryl and tried not to look at the dead body next to him or the sticky that coated the inside of his thighs. There wasn’t a way to swiftly pull up his pants, but he forced himself to do it anyway. A button on his jeans had come off, and his hands shook visibly while he tried pulling up the zipper. He didn’t miss the red marks on his hips, or how they were long and finger shaped, and he noticed the two belt loops that had been torn off his pants.

“Daryl?” he asked again.

There was still no response.

Glenn walked over.

Daryl’s fist clenched around his crossbow and he raised it slightly. “Take a step closer and I’ll do the same to you.”

“Daryl…” Glenn said. He stopped to two yards away from him. He didn’t want to acknowledge the body that lay behind him, head shot through like a walker. He glanced over anyway. A knot formed in his chest when he saw the face, something between relief and revulsion.

“You got somethin’ to say?” Daryl asked.

“How hurt are you?”

“The hell do you think?”

“Right,” Glenn said sheepishly. “Stupid question.”

He didn’t want to sit down in case he couldn’t bring himself stand back up; it was hard enough the first time, and now that he realized just how painful it was, he wasn’t sure he’d want to do it again.

“We need to go back,” Glenn said.

“Give me a goddamn moment, Christ,” Daryl snapped. “Just… wait.”

There were handprints on Daryl’s elbows and at his shoulders, and on the backs of his arms were scratches in his skin. Gras and dirt stuck to the back of his shirt and hair, some of which was beginning to mat with blood. That probably wasn’t the only blood. In fact, it definitely wasn’t.

“Daryl,” Glenn said. He was speaking more firmly now. “We have to get out of here. Walkers might have heard us.”

For a long moment Daryl didn’t say anything. He still wasn’t looking at Glenn, and the way he had his hand wrapped around his crossbow made Glenn hesitant to say anything else. He had almost no experience shooting a gun and nothing on Daryl’s lightning fast reflexes.

Daryl wasn’t saying anything, though, so, after a moment of deliberation, Glenn continued. “They could come back,” he said, “For revenge.”

 _For more_.

The thought made him shudder. Quickly he checked over his shoulder to see the body lying just where it had been, still dead with an arrow through the head.

His friends weren’t, and there was no reason for them not to come back, possibly even with friends. Glenn didn’t know how injured either of them were; the arrow through the back of the man’s head and the subsequent body falling onto him had been enough to distract him, and by the time he heaved the body off of himself, Daryl was finished with the other men and they were making their escape. They’d been running, though, so whatever injuries they had weren’t deadly. As far as Glenn knew, they were still alive, and they might be back.

“Whose fault would that be?” Daryl asked, suddenly.

“What?”

“If any walkers find us,” he said. He leaned forward and tried to stand up, getting a good grip on the ground with his hands and forcing himself up to a crouch. The movement was quick but not fluid, and at several points Daryl’s chest shook with a long breath that he held as he forced himself to his feet.

“If anyone heard us, whose fault would that be?” Daryl asked once he was finally standing. He began to mess around with his pants, making sure they sat on his hips as he buttoned them back up. “You were the one who shot the gun.”

Glenn was momentarily stunned. “I had to do it,” he managed to spit out. “It was the only thing I could think of to distract them long enough for you to get the crossbow and shoot them.”

“Here’s to hopin’ no walkers heard that, then,” he said. “I’m sure they care a whole lot about why you decided to shoot it.”

Glenn tightened his fingers around the gun. He had limited experience with a weapon, but it was a comfort to have it in his hand.

“Let’s get moving, then,” Daryl said. He picked his crossbow up from the ground and slung it over his shoulder. His arm stretched a bit too far and he visibly winced.

When he turned around, Glenn could see more of the inventory of Daryl’s injury – there was a bloody nose and what looked like the start of a black eye, and around his neck were several red, finger-shaped welts. 

Daryl spared only a glance at Glenn before walking past him to the dead body to pull out the arrow. It didn’t come lose; the body wasn’t decomposed at all, and the arrow was stuck in there.

“Those other fuckers ran off with one of my other arrows,” he said. “It was sticking right through his shoulder, too. Just a little lower, and I could’ve had his heart.”

He gave another harsh tug to the arrow, lifting the skull up slightly. When it still wasn’t coming loose, he let go and the head dropped back onto the asphalt with a sick thud.

Just when Glenn thought he was going to walk away, Daryl suddenly turned and gave a sharp, swift kick to the head, and then another one. The head cracked to the side, and if the man was still alive he would’ve heard his own neck break, if the force of the blow didn’t kill him already.

When Daryl was finished, part of the head was smashed in and gore was sprayed around the parking lot. The arrow was still jammed through the back of the head, on the side of the skull that Daryl hadn’t kicked in, and had he done so it would have likely ended with the arrow as broken as the skull was.

Daryl stood over the body, shaking, and then turned back to Glenn.

“Let’s get out of here.”

Glenn glanced down at the body and felt a sick sense of satisfaction at the sight before him. Fucker deserved it, after all. He hadn’t pegged himself as being the sort of person who would be glad for someone else’s death, or the sort who would think that death was too good.

He also hadn’t ever pegged himself as the sort of person to get raped, either, but here he was, dead. The other two men had got away. This was a small consolation prize.

At least he had that.

He felt a pang of sympathy for Daryl then, who couldn’t say the same and was going to still live with the understand that his rapists were still out there, and judging by the fact that they were raiding a town not too far from where there camp was, they were nearby. The thought didn’t do anything to comfort Glenn, so quickly he pushed it from his mind and focused on the present – getting himself and Daryl back to camp.

Daryl was limping away, noticeably in pain but not saying anything. He walked out of the abandoned parking lot and looked down the road, which was still as empty as it had been before. There were only a few stores and houses here to begin with: a convenience store, a pharmacy, a gas station. It wasn’t a bad place to do a raid, and apparently other people had the same idea.

Glenn just wanted to get out of there.

He followed a few feet behind Daryl, not able to keep pace with the other man who was somehow able to keep a quicker, steadier pace than he was. Every step was agony, but there wasn’t much that could be done about that other than just powering back to the car and then getting back to camp.

A few buildings down, and Daryl’s powerwalk slowed to more of a regular pace, and then something closer to how fast Glenn was able to walk. One of his hands rested on his side, and eventually he had to lean against a wall for a moment, giving Glenn a chance to catch up with him.

“How far are we from the car?” Glenn asked.

Daryl shrugged. “Not too far,” he said. “Just a few streets over.”

“We’ll have to warn everyone about this place,” Glenn said. “There are at least two people coming out here, possibly more.”

“Hah,” Daryl spat. “And what’re we gonna say? That we got _raped_?” Glenn flinched, and Daryl sneered at him for it. “Nah, we ain’t sayin’ nothing about what happened.”

“Then what are we going to say?” Glenn asked. “How are we going to explain this?”

“There’s nothing to explain,” he said. “This ain’t no one’s business and no one’s gonna be hearing crap about it. Got that?”

“Yeah, sure, everything except how we’re going to explain being beaten to hell,” Glenn said. The thought of coming out and saying telling anyone what happened didn’t sit right with him, but neither did it sit right to imagine their faces, looking at them both and knowing that something happened. Lori would have that look of concern on her face that she usually gave to Carl, that motherly look that knew what was going on, and Glenn didn’t doubt for a minute that all Dale would have to do was look at him before he just knew. “Oh, and how we left on a supply run and came back an hour later with nothing.”

“Whatever,” Daryl said. “They’re not knowing about this. They don’t need to.”

Glenn wasn’t keen on the idea either. “We don’t have to say exactly what happened,” he said. “We’ll just tell them not to come out here since there are a bunch of thugs who ambushed us. They won’t believe us if we try to get on like happened.”

“How obvious is it?” he abruptly asked. He turned around to face Glenn, who realized that until this moment he’d never stood this close to Daryl.

His left eye was starting to swell, badly, with purples and blacks around the entirety of the eye socket and moving on to part of his nose. The whites of his eyes were red, something that made his blue eyes stand out sharply from the contrast. Blood dripped from his left nostril and was drying on his upper lip, and there were various scratches all across Daryl’s skin.

He’d never realized Daryl’s eyes were blue, nor had he ever really looked at Daryl much at all – not consciously, at least. He must have paid at least some attention to him to be able to point out what parts of his face were swollen, and to know that his nose didn’t look crooked or broken, and to at least say with some confidence that any injuries were temporary, and that his lips were split and a little swollen.

He dreaded to think about how he must look.

 _We are filthy_.

“You look like you were beat to hell,” he said.

“Nothing else?” Daryl asked. His eyes kept flitting between each of Glenn’s and scanning the other man’s face.

“What do you mean?” he said.

“I mean,” he said, then stopped for a minute and wet his lips. He glanced down to the ground between them. “I mean, it ain’t obvious, is it? What happened to us.”

Glenn glanced at Daryl’s waist and his pants. There were handprints on his own hips and sticky, dried blood between his legs, and the button that had been taken off. If anyone saw that, it’d be obvious what happened. Daryl probably had his own inventory of dead giveaways that were at the front of his mind.

“You’ve got a rip at the knee,” Glenn said after he gave Daryl a quick look over. “I didn’t see anything torn at the back. There’s some dirt on you, but there’s nothing… obvious.”

Daryl looked away for a moment. “There’s nothing obvious on you, either.”

“No one will know if they just see you like this,” Glenn went on. “It just looks like we took a beating.”

“Cause that’s what happened,” Daryl said, but nonetheless he nodded. “That’s fine, then. Let’s just get back and that’ll be it.”

The car was past a few more stores, and had thankfully remained untouched. Daryl climbed into the driver’s seat and Glenn tentatively took a seat at the passenger’s side. Just being in the car was a weight off his shoulders; between walkers and asshole survivors, it was a comfort to know the doors locked.

They set off. It had taken about twenty minutes to get here, so hopefully it wouldn’t take any longer to get back. He’d be glad to get back, at least for the company and the knowledge that there were a few other people who had his back.

For the start of the car trip they sat quietly. Every so often Glenn looked over at Daryl, whose attention was firmly focused on the road.

The closer they got to camp, the slower Daryl started driving until he came to a halt. It would just be a moment before they really got there, and Daryl didn’t seem to be saying anything.

About two miles away from camp, the car abruptly slowed down, then stopped in the middle of the road.

“What’s wrong?” Glenn asked.

“Just pissed those assholes got two of my arrows,” Daryl said. “Thinking maybe I should go back to get them, you know? Before we go back to camp, might as well go try to pry it out of that fucker’s head.”

“It didn’t work the first time,” Glenn pointed out. “We’re almost back, anyway.”

“I need those, you know,” he snapped. He wasn’t looking at Glenn, instead staring at the road in front of the car. “Don’t got many of those left, and two fucking arrows were wasted on them. It’s not like I can just go walking into one of those sports shops anymore, is it?”

“I guess not,” Glenn slowly said, suddenly reluctant to say anything more.

“Gotta explain that, too, don’t I?” he asked. “Someone’s gonna ask about that and pretty soon I’m just gonna be useless out here, isn’t it? Soon I’ll be out of arrows and those fuckers will have wasted two of them.”

Daryl spat with frustration and let out a shaky breath. His hands were clenched across the wheel, knuckles white, his arms shaking.

“It’s going to be alright,” Glenn finally said after a long moment where they sat there.

“What would you know about that?” Daryl demanded. He turned to look at Glenn head on. His breathing was heavy and everything else seemed to be shaky.

“I was there,” Glenn said. “It happened to me too. Something like this isn’t _easy_ , but it can still be alright. We’re here, after all, aren’t we?”

He couldn’t get a good reading on Daryl’s expression and what he was trying to convey, but the other man didn’t seem to be angry at him. His lips were tightly pressed together and his eyes were narrowing at Glenn as he talked.

“Guess we are,” Daryl said after a long moment. “Lucky us, right?”

Daryl didn’t say anything else, but looked back to the road. Glenn took it as an invitation to continue. “We’ll go back to the camp, we won’t say anything about what happened, and that’ll be it. We got out of it, didn’t we? You got us out of it,” he quickly amended. “This won’t make either of us useless. It’s not going to be what kills us.”

“Just gonna have to get on with it, like everything else that’s happened,” Daryl said with a snort, perhaps from indignation, or perhaps his own show of agreement to the possibility.

Getting on with it was the only thing Glenn could think of doing at this point, never mind that there wasn’t much of a choice otherwise.

**Author's Note:**

> For [this](http://twd-kinkmeme.livejournal.com/5396.html?thread=7610132#t7610132) kink meme prompt.


End file.
